“Wearables” In The Metaverse: Metaverse Fashion Week?

This Metaverse stuff is driving me crazy because they are repurposing terms that have been in use for a long time now, starting with “the Metaverse” itself.  There is only one “metaverse”, and it isn’t a digital game space with headsets [6].

This week we read about “Metaverse Fashion Week”, which takes place in Decentraland, a leading Metaverse space [8].  This is a virtual mock up of a conventional fashion show, which will feature a lot of “wearables”.

Now, “wearables” used to mean “wearable computers” (e.g., [1, 3, 10]), but now it means a mashup of paper dolls with avatars (a la [5]), cosplay with augmented reality (see [2]), and NFT / blockchain trading cards [9].

“These include digitally native garments such as an avatar’s clothing, augmented reality (AR) filters on Instagram and TikTok, digital tailoring or superimposing NFTs on real-life photos, speculative investing, and proof of ownership through blockchain data.”

(from [9])

Basically, this about digitizing the (mainly visual) signaling and commercial aspects of “fashion”.  It’s all about appearance and ownership.  These are two important facets of “fashion”, though the Metaverse version underrepresents the non-verbal aspects and the sheer hedonistic pleasure of wearing fine apparel.  It is a distorted version of “fashion”.

The Web3 / Metaverse world tends to be very Internet-y, not given to critical thinking or intellectual criticism of any kind.  In Nakamotoland, it’s impolite to talk about the dubious epistemological status of the Emperor’s spring wardrobe.

So it is interesting to note that even in the Metaverse people are wondering about “wearables”, as one headline put it, “who, what wearables” [7].  What are these artifacts? Who are these for? What are they?

I mean, sure, why shouldn’t my avatar be able to buy a new hat for Easter?  And maybe I want a digital version of my favorite team hat for my avatar to wear.

But a virtual version of fashion week?  Expensive designer gear for avatars?  Digital “collectibles”?   Does anybody really want this stuff?

A quick glance and the MVFW stuff provides plenty of food for thought.  The 3D graphics are junky, unlike real world fashion shows which are very high end.  Overall, MVFW is mainly a low grade video experience [4].  There aren’t any real models or celebrities, nor fancy nibbles and champaign.  You aren’t really there, which is the whole point of, well, being there.

So, I’m not seeing much point in MVFW, and I suspect that not many people will. 

Thinking a bit deeper, let’s think about how the Metaverse compares to on line video games.

The technology is the same, though many games are vastly prettier than a lot of Metaverse stuff.  Video games are extremely popular, at least among relatively small populations.  So, what should the Metaverse do to match the success of video games?

First of all, no one video game has universal appeal.  For that matter, even ubiquitous digital media such as email or facebook are actually fragmented into zillions of sub-populations with their own content.  We should expect “the” Metaverse to be a bunch of smaller verses.  (Note that Second Life was explicitly organized as “islands”, and people spent time on their favorite islands.)

Second, part of the point of “fashion” is uniqueness and difficulty.  A fancy designer outfit is hard to design, hard to make or copy, and tailored to a specific body.  Digital versions are unconstrained by physics, not particularly difficult to make or copy, and don’t need tailoring.  Indeed, digital fashion becomes fantasy art, as avatars can take any form at all.  When anyone can have an angel’s wings or a unicorn horn, then who cares?  It’s impossible to make digital apparel special.

Third, and most important, the success of video games is, IMO, due to their immersive story telling. The details vary, but in a video game you are called to participate in a complicated and interesting story.  All the graphics, sounds, etc., are in service to telling the story, and getting you play your part.

So, the question is—what is the “story” in the Metaverse?  

Or, in this case, what is the “story” of fashion week, and what is your role in it?

The story seems to be, “look, we can pretend to be celebrities at a fashion show”, which is a pretty boring story.   Especially, since we can only pretend to do all the cool stuff, like be beautiful, take drugs, or have sex. 

Worse, the “player” is basically there in the role of “customer”.  The only thing you can do in this game is buy stuff.   Boring.  (And expensive, since you are supposed to use real money to buy pretend stuff.)

I understand why merchants are excited about this game.  But I’m pretty sure that most people are going be bored in a very short time.

What would make this better?

Well, many video games are very visible in person at comic cons and other similar cosplay occasions.  These situations extend the digital story out into the real world, a world with food, drink, etc.. 

So, I would say that a metaverse fashion show should have a real world component, a la a comic con. There has to be a good party, with an interesting and rewarding real world role for everyone.

The Metaverse is supposed to be about this sort of cross over. I would emphasize, though that the crucial factor is the compelling story telling, not the AR technology.  I say, if you do have VR and AR tech, use it to get people to “play” interesting games.

I note that online video games are highly successful (though only for a relatively small population)

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1. Mark Billinghurst and Thad Starner, Wearable Devices: New Ways to Manage Information. IEEE Computer, 32 (1):57-64,  1999.
2. Alan B. Craig, Understanding Augmented Reality: Concepts and Applications, San Francisco, Morgan Kaufman, 2013.
3. Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre, Tobias Hollerer, and Anthony Webstar. A Touring Machine: Prototype 3D Mobile Augmented Reality Systems for Exploring the Urban Environment. In First International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISCW’97), 1997.
4. Will Gottsegen (2022) The Clumsy Theatrics of Metaverse Fashion Week. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/03/28/the-clumsy-theatrics-of-metaverse-fashion-week/
5. Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au, Mark Wallace, Catherine Winters, Cory Ondrejka, and Benjamin Batstone-Cunningham, Second Life: The Official Guide, Indianapolis, Wiley, 2007.
6. Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, New York, Bantam Spectra, 1992.
7. Cam Thompson (2022) Who What Wearables: A Guide to Digital Fashion and the Metaverse. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/29/who-what-wearables-a-guide-to-digital-fashion-and-the-metaverse/
8. Cam Thompson (2023) Avatars, Get Ready to Strut: Decentraland to Host Second Metaverse Fashion Week. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/02/27/avatars-get-ready-to-strut-decentraland-to-host-second-annual-metaverse-fashion-week/
9. Cam Thompson (2023) Metaverse Fashion Is on the Rise, but for Whom? Consensus Magazine,  https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/03/14/metaverse-fashion-week-decentraland/
10. Kristof Van Laerhoven and Ozan Cakmacki, What shall we teach our pants?, in Fourth International Symposium on Wearable Computers. 2000: Atlanta. p. 77-83. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/888468

If This Is Web 3.0, Then Why Do I Even Want It?

This spring saw a giant Crypto Tulip sale, AKA, the so-called Bored Ape Yacht Club sale of imaginary “real estate” in a neighborhood of the Metaverse that will exist Real Soon Now. 

Sigh.

We’ll ignore the question of why anyone would ever buy something that doesn’t exist and has no value from “some guys on the Internet”, and ask, “So, how did it go?”

Not that well.

OK, the crypto enthusiasts think it was a great success. But most grown ups think it was “a disaster from top to bottom.” [3]

The sale involved the sale of 55,000 NFTs via Ethereum-based transactions, and garnered over $200M for the company [2].   The traffic clogged the Ethereum network and, as it is designed to do, Ethereum automatically gouged users raised fees, and, jsut for fun, many transactions failed (but not before taking your fee, thank you very much).  More than one victim happy user reported paying twice as much in fees as the cost of the asset [1].

Very innovative! Fixed fees for service are for wimps!  And actually delivering a service for a paid fee is so Web 1.0!

I should note that this is a familiar experience for Ethereum users. I’ve experienced it myself more than a year ago.  You never know what it will cost to do your transaction, and if you don’t pay the high fees your transaction will never complete.  It’s a hell of a way to run a railroad!

The most important thing to point out, though, is that this was just one sale of only 55,000 items.  That is a pittance compared to, say, Amazon’s hourly traffic, let along the real world economy. 

Yet, Ethereum—a fairly mature and well-engineered project—flopped down dead.  This is hardly the behavior of a world changing “Web 3.0” technology, is it?

Look.  Much of my professional career involved scaling up software.  I know what I’m talking about here. Here’s my expert evaluation:

“Not ready yet?”

No, it is not.

Worse, it’s not really looking like a good idea.

Recounting multiple heists, scams, and now the catastrophic Bored Ape episode, Farhad Manjoo puts it, “the continual blowups should crater those expectations” [3].

“But how many people have to lose their shirts before we realize that web3 isn’t a solution to any of our problems?”

(from [3])

I’m afraid I agree.

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1. Daniel Van Boom, How Bored Ape Yacht Club Broke Ethereum, in CNet, May 3, 2022. https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/how-bored-ape-yacht-club-broke-ethereum/
2. Will Gottsegen and Eli Tan (2022) BAYC Team Raises $285M With Otherside NFTs, Clogs Ethereum. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/01/bayc-team-raises-285m-with-otherside-nfts-clogs-ethereum/
3. Farhad Manjoo, What Is Happening to the People Falling for Crypto and NFTs, in New York Times. 2022: New York. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/opinion/crypto-nfts-web3.html

Cryptocurrency Thursday

NFT Markets Can’t Be Trusted

NFT’s have been the flavor of the month this year in Nakamotoland.  This Nth order crypto technology is built on top of “smart contracts”, which are built on top of blockchains, and enables anyone to buy and—more important—sell cryptograpically unique digital tokens.  Basically, these are Internet enabled box tops.

As I have remarked before, this is hardly groundbreaking economics.  The main “innovation” is that pretty much anyone can do it.  And pretty much anyone is doing it.

This fall we are shocked—shocked!—to learn that NFT markets are not necessarily trustworthy.  For example, the widely used NFT marketplace Openseas has been rocked by an insider trading scandal [1].  It seems that one of the executives there was secretly buying new assets just before they were featured on the front page, and then selling them on the initial bump.

It turns out that this is not illegal, and apparently not against company policy until he was caught.  It couldn’t be illegal because NFT’s are basically unregulated, and NFT market places are completely unregulated.  They may look like conventional commodity trading, but they differ in one crucial respect:  securities laws do not currently apply.  You’re on your own.  Good luck.

This has been a bit of a black eye for Openseas and NFTs overall.  I mean, if the punters realize that they are being ripped off, they might walk away.  Or they might sue.  Or the gendarmes might move in.

This goes to show, you can’t trust Openseas, or any other NFT marketplace.

What?  Wait!  Nakamotoland is specifically and fundamentally about making finance trustworthy via “trustless”, decentralized technology.  NFT’s use Ethereum (in the case of Openseas), so they are decentralized and “trustless”, no?

The problem is, of course, that the marketplace (Openseas in this case) is not decentralized, nor is it “trustless” in the Nakamotoan sense.  Trading on Openseas or similar platform uses cryptocurrency and blockchain-based executable contracts, but the actual transactions are done on a perfectly conventional on line system.  An online system run be a company, with a handful of Carbon-based units including a “head of product”.

NFT Market (e.g. OpenSeas)	Centralized     X
NFT	Decentralized
“Smart Contract”	Decentralized
Cryptocurrency	Decentralized
Blockchain	Decentralized
Public Key Cryptography	Decentralized

Oops.  Openseas is very non-Nakamotoan

If NFT markets operate pretty much the same as any other online market, shouldn’t they be regulated to assure fair play for customers?  That’s certainly a good question.

As Will Gottsegen comments, regulatory oversite would be a good thing for customers and for the industry itself [2].  Needless to say, the brilliant innovators who run NFT markets are strongly opposed to making them follow the same rules as everybody else.  Who wants government agents and lawyers sticking their noses in this gazillion dollar bonanza?  But, as Gottsegen says, “To help build that trust, oversight may be a price companies are willing to pay”.

“The crypto industry has a notoriously antagonistic relationship with regulation, but if NFTs are going to take off in a more mainstream way, buyers need to know they’ve got a fair shot.”

(From [2])

I’d say that regulation is coming, probably pretty soon, like it or not.

However, I have to wonder just how well the NFT craze will fare if they become more like conventional assets.  Carefully accounted, audited.  Taxed.  Etc.  If the overheads get too high, why bother with NFTs? Why not just buy and sell conventional assets?

At least some, and possibly a lot, of the interest in NFTs is the DIY simplicity, that lets anyone do it.  If the bar for trading gets too high, then it will price out the millions of little people who make NFTs different and interesting.  If NFTs become something that only celebrities and corporations can do, they are nearly pointless because celebrities and corporations already can do this stuff without NFTs.

It’s a dilemma.  Unregulated NFTs let anyone (including me) play the game.  But regulation is necessary to make the game fair for the little guy (like me).  But regulation may well push little guys (like me) out. 

I dunno.

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1. Will Gottsegen (2021) Insider Trading Allegations Rock OpenSea, NFT Marketplace Responds. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/09/15/insider-trading-allegations-rock-opensea-nft-marketplace-responds/
2. Will Gottsegen (2021) OpenSea Scandal Shows Need for More NFT Regulation. Coindesk,  https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/09/20/opensea-scandal-shows-need-for-more-nft-regulation/

Cryptocurrency Thursday